


The Strange Case of Noire Jekyll and Blanchet Hyde

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Gothic horror AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strange Case of Noire Jekyll and Blanchet Hyde

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Panny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/gifts).



            "It won't work," Noire whimpers, slumping down against the side of the apothecary counter.

            "Of course it will." Severa slams open the journal retrieved from the home of the late Dr. Tharja Jekyll and hastily gathers the items noted therein from the shelves. "We have all the ingredients right here."

            There's a thump on the other side of the closed and barred back room door. Apparently, the chemist has woken up. Severa ignores him, trusting that the ropes will hold.

            "We don't have Mother's magic," Noire objects.

            "Magic isn't real," Severa tells her, and begins to measure out the various powders and liquids into a beaker.

            "She was a _witch_ , Severa!"

            Severa huffs. "I never said she wasn't."

            Back when Tharja first discovered the two of them together and tut-tutted about the need to protect her daughter's reputation, Severa had been prepared for all manner of inconvenient things to happen. She had _not_ been prepared for the madwoman to dose Noire with a potion that would, in her own words, "allow her to indulge in her more scandalous appetites incognito."

            Severa did not consider herself an object of "scandalous appetite," nor did she have much interest in the girl — the _creature_ — that Miss Jekyll became when she drank the brew. It was Noire that Severa loved — sweet, sensitive, soft-spoken Noire — not Blanchet Hyde, that monster in just-barely-human form who trampled children in the street and paid to visit women with no choice but to sell their company.

            Trouble was, Noire came to _like_ taking the potion. She said it felt like freeing herself from all her fears and anxieties.

            Trouble was, Miss Hyde got stronger the more she took it. It wasn't long before she started popping up even without Noire summoning her, and not long after _that,_ Tharja had to start brewing a _new_ potion just to turn her back.

            Trouble was, Miss Hyde eventually sunk to murder and got the police after her. It took a steady supply of her mother's potions just to keep Noire from being hanged.

            Trouble is, the potions have all run out now, and Tharja Jekyll is dead.

            Severa gets a clasp around the beaker, lights the gas on the bunsen burner, and heats the one over the other, tapping out the seconds with her foot.

            "Severa," Noire whispers, "she's coming."

            Severa looks down and sees the other girl's dark hair fading to white-blonde, her tall back shrinking, her muscular arms turning thin and wiry. She hurriedly turns off the gas and takes the beaker from its clasp. "Here, drink it! It's _probably_ ready!"

            The girl sitting on the floor laughs, loud and shrill, and pulls herself to her feet.

            "Blood and thunder!" Miss Hyde crows, and, still laughing, smashes a glass vial against the counter. Holding the jagged edge outward, she turns to the back room door that the chemist is still desperately thumping against.

            Severa's blood goes as cold as the London fog clinging to the apothecary windows. She knows Blanchet Hyde leaves no witnesses, and she also knows how much harder it will be for Noire to keep living with yet another murder weighing on her soul.

            She grabs Miss Hyde's wrist — _not_ Noire's wrist, she tells herself, it's too thin, it couldn't possibly be — and twists. The vial drops and shatters. Severa wrestles Miss Hyde to the floor, trying not to think of the glass that litters it cutting into Noire's flesh.

            "Drink it!" she says, shoving the beaker in Miss Hyde's face.

            Miss Hyde sneers. "It won't work."

            "You'd better pray it does," Severa tells her, and pours the potion down her throat.

            As Miss Hyde sputters, she adds to herself, much more quietly, "We'd both better pray."

            Once the coughing stops, Miss Hyde shrieks with laughter. "It's useless! Pray all you like, the blood and thunder is finally free!" Severa holds her down despite her struggling and does not respond.

            Minutes pass. Both struggling and laughter eventually weaken, then cease.

            "It worked," Noire says in surprise. Severa gets off of her and helps her to her feet.

            "Of course it did," she says, brushing the dust of the floor off Noire's arms and legs and stealthily inspecting them for embedded shards of glass as she does so. "I told you it would!"

            When she's satisfied that Noire is unharmed, she begins to gather vials and boxes of ingredients into her bag. Noire watches her morosely.

            "Severa, what are we going to do? We can't keep running like this forever."

            "We can try," Severa tells her.

            The thumping on the back room door goes on, and the fog laps at the windows.


End file.
